Friday, November 25, 2016

This is how the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, talks about climate change. This is not made up, this is not from Shakespeare's Richard III, this is reality.
Here the transcript from the New York Times:

FRIEDMAN:
But it’s really important to me, and I think to a lot of our readers,
to know where you’re going to go with this. I don’t think anyone objects
to, you know, doing all forms of energy. But are you going to take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change?

TRUMP:
I’m looking at it very closely, Tom. I’ll tell you what. I have an open
mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully. It’s one issue that’s
interesting because there are few things where there’s more division
than climate change. You don’t tend to hear this, but there are people
on the other side of that issue who are, think, don’t even …

SULZBERGER: We do hear it.

FRIEDMAN: I was on ‘Squawk Box’ with Joe Kernen this morning, so I got an earful of it.

[laughter]

TRUMP:
Joe is one of them. But a lot of smart people disagree with you. I have
a very open mind. And I’m going to study a lot of the things that
happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully. But I have
an open mind.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

The Guardian has a short article on this issue. Damian Carrington reports that '2016 will very likely be the hottest year on record and a new high for the third year in a row, according to the UN. It means 16 of the 17 hottest years on record will have been this century.'

He also writes that

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report, published on Monday at the global climate summit in Morocco, found the global temperature in 2016 is running 1.2C above pre-industrial levels. This is perilously close to to the 1.5C target included as an aim of the Paris climate agreement last December.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

I have a short piece on the Guardian Political Science blog in which I discuss the meaning of expertise in politics. My comment was stimulated by assertions that 'people have had enough of expertise', and by Trump's 'post-truth' politics.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Gernot Wagner and Richard Zeckhauser have a new paper out. It's title is 'Confronting Deep and Persistent Climate Uncertainty' and the motto of the paper is 'Climate science is not settled.' To avoid misunderstanding, the authors are not contrarians of climate policy, quite the contrary. Their argument is supposed to boost policies aimed at decarbonization.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

As Paul Matthews pointed out in the comments section of a previous thread, Richard Tol has a new paper, called The Structure of the Climate Debate. In it he argues for a specific climate policy (low but rising carbon tax); celebrates the Paris agreement for handing back the responsibility to nation states; and discussing possible reasons for the lack of progress in climate policy over the past two decades.

The paper is well written and I suggest you read it in full. I will restrict myself to a few comments for now. These comments relate to the proposed carbon tax and the reasons for the lack of progress.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Dan Sarewitz has written a thought provoking piece for The New Atlantis, "Saving Science". He argues that science has received massively increased funding during the Cold War until today, but has lost its innovative role in solving problems for society. He sees the reason for this in science being left to itself, operating under a mandate that is not responsive to societal demands. Much research is fraudulent, not replicable, or irrelevant.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

The Guardian has a page 3 article today on reports that July 2016 was the hottest July ever. It is a good illustration of how information from the physical sciences is used to argue for urgent climate policy measures. It is a useful reminder of how the dominant framing of climate change plays out in everyday media communications. Readers of Klimazwiebel will know that I am no fan of this kind of approach, in fact none of the Klimazwiebel editors is.

So what does the article say, and why is it problematic to expect any positive policy effects based on reporting like this?

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

I have a short piece in Nature Geoscience with the title 'Climate change as a wicked social problem'. Here is the link http://rdcu.be/jvEI.

I argue that climate change has been defined as a problem with a solution, following the successful example of the ozone layer. Applying the conceptual pair of tame and wicked problems I make the case that whereas ozone protection can be seen as a tame problem (which has a clearly specified solution), climate change cannot. It is a classical wicked problem that only can be managed better or worse. But influential actors who applied the same logic from ozone to climate were ignorant of social science research that could have prevented this colossal error of framing. This framing error has led to the belief that scientific consensus drives policy and that any distraction from 'the science' is the reason for a lack of progress.

It is high time the social sciences (not only economics, who have been the only visible social science discipline in the IPCC) start engaging with the issue of climate change on their own terms. All too often they have been defining the issue of climate change in terms of climate science, forgetting the unique contributions they can make.

The report presents the findings of a survey of climate scientists’ perceptions of the global warming issue. The survey was conducted in 2015/16. The survey includes the following sections: demographics of participants, participants’ assessment of climate science, the utility of models, extreme events, attribution of extreme events, climate and society, science and society.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Mark Lynas has just published the last interview with David, eleven days before his death. In this frank account of energy policy, MacKay has something to say about the prospect of solar, wind, CCS, nuclear.... and the Ecomodernist Manifesto.
See the context on Mark Lynas' blog here http://www.marklynas.org/2016/04/david-mackay-last-interview-tribute/
including David MacKay's famous Global Calculator.
=======================================

Last week David MacKay died who was an incredibly creative scientist, and advisor to the UK government. While I did not have the opportunity to meet him in person I was impressed by his book 'Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air'. The book is freely available online (http://www.withouthotair.com/). MacKay takes a pragmatic approach to climate policy and asks what types of our activities use what amount of energy and how we could make a difference. He develops a number based approach, equating every energy type to a the equivalent of a 40W light bulb which is always on. On average a person in Britain uses the equivalent of 125 light bulbs.

MacKay reveals some interesting facts about the contribution we could make to energy consumption (mobile phone chargers are not a good place to start). He also shows the challenge posed by the decarbonization goals. Even if we covered all of the British coastline with tidal energy systems we would only reduce the number of light bulbs per person by 4. If we were serious about eliminating the equivalent of all 125 light bulbs half of Britain would be covered with windfarms (we need 600,000 of them). Alternatively we could build 300 nuclear power plants.

The Telegraph has an obituary here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/04/15/professor-sir-david-mackay-physicist--obituary/

The energy debate in the UK, and across the globe, has lost an important voice of reason.

Friday, February 19, 2016

As already announced, the 5th
Bray-and-von Storch survey has been completed and the response frequencies
become available. For further details of the set of five surveys refer to the
first entry here on the Klimazwiebel. The sampling and the demographics will be
made public with the full report, which is to be expected in a few months.

Here, and in following threads, we
will present a few results of the 5th Bray-and-von Storch survey,
which may be of interest for some; we certainly would like to hear the comments
by the readers.

Today we discuss the responses of
two questions from the block “Science and Society”, which are essentially
asking if science should be “FOR the people” or “BY the people”.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

In the past,
beginning in 1995, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, conducted a series of
interviews with an international sample of climate scientists concerning their
opinions of climate change, climate models and the social and political
dimension of climate change. These interviews provided the basis for a set of
questions to be used as a survey instrument of the broader climate science
community.

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.